|| -----Original Message-----
|| From:Doug Henwood
||
|| Dennis Robert Redmond wrote:
||
|| >This just in from the food-court of the Starship Europa:
|| >
|| >>"For Mr Caldagues, the cafe-owner, the end of the franc means
|| the end of
|| > >France itself.
|| > >
|| >>"France no longer exists," he said. "It's Europe now."
|| >
|| >http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_182500
|| 0/1825952.stm
|| >
|| >-- Dennis
||
|| It's weird to meet the newborn euro. What a strange currency it is,
|| in its physical form. No historical figures, no landmarks, just
|| generic "European"-looking monuments, and five variations on the
|| initials of the central bank. It's money reduced to its pure
|| unitness, stripped of all the cultural associations characteristic of
|| traditional monies. If, as Marx said, we carry our bond with society
|| in our pockets, then the euro represents society as designed by
|| central bankers, the true princes of our time.
||
|| Doug
France never did exist in South Asia (Dennis's link). The right link is: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1826000/1826064.stm
Doug is right on. Francs were broad, beautiful, and distinctly French. Guilders were a showcase of Dutch graphic design. The EU threw away the art on its banknotes for this faceless Euro paper, which is like eurocars, the Audiwagens that you can't tell apart without looking at the logo. It's a lowest-common-denominator committee creature and as such has been embraced wholeheartedly by the French almost on day 1. Abandoning their /terroir/ where the roots of their culture once were, deserting their cafes and working-class musettes, swearing off the wine that cuts down their efficiency, reducing their /midi/ to a measly salad or - ugh - hamburger, and now chucking away Marianne, who adorned their coins, all that the French "exception culturelle" now amounts to really is sex.
Hakki